We would like to invite abstract submissions for an open panel at the 4S Conference (Society for the Social Study of Science) in Denver (11-14 November 2015). The deadline to submit an individual paper abstract to the conference is March 29, 2015. When you submit on the conference website, you will be prompted to indicate the panel to which you would like to contribute. …

Made objects, unlike bodies that disintegrate – are trans-temporal. They are mobile and are continually moving across time and space, carrying within them stories and meanings that they have accumulated as a result of this mobility. In an increasingly interconnected world – where the meanings of mediatory agents are endlessly shifting, traveling and transforming – there is a growing need for critical inquiry that concerns the entangled nature of materiality, mediation and mobility. Themes of distance and nearness and the impact of movement on the material will be considered during this conference. Papers, panels or workshops are welcomed that investigate how contemporary and historical circulations of people and things across time and space have meaningful implications within the contexts of both the local and the global.…

Since its formation in 1994, the Material Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association (ASA) has bridged the gap between university-based and museum-based scholars to promote the study of material culture in American Studies programs. To celebrate its twentieth birthday, the Caucus sponsored a workshop on Friday November 7, 2014, during the ASA national meeting in Los Angeles.

In the spirit of fun embedded in the conference theme, Debby Andrews, Sarah Anne Carter, Estella Chung, Ellen Gruber Garvey, and Catherine Whalen challenged workshop participants to play a variant of the classic game, “Twenty Questions.” Videographer Mark Escribano documented the event. To see how the workshop played out, and how such questions can inspire object-based exercises in the classroom or the museum, follow these links:

The Geffrye Museum would like to share details of the Histories of Home Subject Specialist Network Call For Papers for 7th Annual Conference Homes Under Pressure.

Please forward to any staff and students.
This conference will explore how museums and researchers can document homes under pressure across the world in both contemporary and historical contexts. Homes can come under pressure from a variety of forces or influences, such as social change, economic hardship, politics and the law, or personal difficulty. This pressure is felt in homes in a wide variety of ways, and can create or entrench inequalities based on gender, class, race, sexuality, and ability. At the same time, pressure on homes creates or calls for responses, alternatives, and new forms of homes: these can range from the very personal and individual, to more collective responses rooted in or inspired by activism.…

The Material Culture Caucus (MCC) of the American Studies Association (ASA) wishes to encourage participation in the 2015 Annual Meeting: “The (Re)production of Misery and the Ways of Resistance,” October 8-11, 2015, Toronto, Canada. To read the conference Call for Papers please visit the ASA website.

Areas of interest related to the theme include, but are not limited to, the material culture of:

• War and other forms of violence

• Empire and colonialism

• Slavery

• Crisis and trauma

• Diaspora and immigration

• Prisons

• Poverty

• ‘Basic needs’: food (and water), clothing, and shelter

• Alienated/unalienated labor

• Inequitable/‘fair’ trade

• Racism

• Patriarchy/feminism

• Heteronormativity/queerness

• Ruins and preservation

• NAGPRA, repatriation, and cultural patrimony

• Climate change/sustainability

• Religion and spirituality

• Failure in business, technology, architecture and design, or relationships

Via Prof. Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University
22-23 JUNE 2015
Photographic History Research Centre De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

The 2015 PHRC Annual International Conference will address the complex and wide range question of ‘photography in print.’ The conference aims to explore the functions, affects and dynamics of photographs on the printed page. Many of the engagements with photographs, both influential and banal, are through print, whether in newspapers, books, magazines or advertising. We would like to consider what are the practices of production and consumption? What are the affects of design and materiality? How does the photograph in print present a new dynamic of photography’s own temporal and spatial qualities? In addition, photography can be said to be ‘made’ through the printed page and ‘print communities’.

Future Anterior invites essays that explore the relationship between copyright and preservation from a historical, theoretical and critical perspective. Both copyright and preservation laws are aimed at protecting unique human achievements, but they point to different, even opposing threats. Whereas copyright is meant to protect private interests from public encroachments, preservation mostly aims to safeguard the public interest against private forces. But as the categories of private and public are redrawn under the pressures of globalization, what challenges and opportunities lay ahead for preservation?

Both preservation and copyright law attempt to answer a basic question: Who has the right to make a copy? This question has a long but unexplored history within preservation.…

The Royal Anthropological Institute will host an international conference on Anthropology and Photography at the British Museum, 29-31 May, 2014.

The aim of the Conference is to stimulate an international discussion on the place, role and future of photography. Panel proposals are therefore welcome from any branch of anthropology. We welcome contributions from researchers and practitioners working in museums, academia, media, the arts and anyone who is engaged with historical or contemporary production and use of images.